Zettai Meikyuu Grimm – Cute, but dark

Zettai Meikyuu Grimm is a standard otome visual novel with cute designs but many dark turns in the plot. I finished it twice and got Akazukin’s (Red Riding Hood) and Ibara-hime (sorta-Sleeping Beauty)’s endings. The more of this sort of game I play, the easier it becomes for me to recognize the sort of visual novels I can stand and the sort that drive me round the bend.

The type I can stand

  • Nice art & character designs, where “nice” means whatever I can stand to look at for hours on end
  • Interesting characters
  • At least one target I want to pursue
  • Fast-moving plots that aren’t too stupid
  • Fast-changing scenes
  • More dialogue based than description-based (very important!)
  • Less telling, more showing. Since it’s a visual novel, I don’t need descriptions of scenes and characters and anything I can see on the screen.
  • Good sound and voice acting – optional
  • Has a relationship value-system instead of an event flag system – optional, but highly preferred.

The worthless type

Anything that does not follow the above. With a handy checklist like that, all I need is an hour with an VN to figure out whether it’s right for me or not. Result: less time wasted, less frustration, lower blood pressure. And everybody wins.

Back on topic, Zettai Meikyuu Grimm: Nanatsu no Kagi to Rakuen no Otome (Absolute Labyrinth Grimm: The 7 Keys and The Maiden of Paradise) was a decent VN that had pretty much everything I was looking for. The character designs were cute, the story was simple but fast-paced (MC Henrietta Grimm falls asleep for 5 years and wakes up to find her brothers missing. She goes on a search for them and has many wacky adventures along the way), on my first run through I took a liking to Akazukin and got his ending without too much trouble.

In the past I wasn’t too fond of the “Hyper guy who may or may not be a shota” type, but watching Fruits Basket and Ookiku Furikabutte made them grow on me a little bit. Plus Akazukin was the best out of my other party members: Hamel, the money-grubbing piper who is a total rip off of the Violinist of Hamelin, Rapunzel, who is a bro but is also a girl, the Frog Prince who is, well, a frog (though you find out later he’s pretty handsome as a human) and Ludwig, who is the MC’s brother, and you know I don’t go there.

Akazukin’s story was standard Red Riding Hood stuff. Tra la laa, picking fruit, eating pie with grandma, turning your back for a second to find out… What are those giant blood splatters all over the walls?! Grandma has been eaten by a wolf?! Like, really really eaten and not just swallowed whole? I thought this was a KID’S GAME!!!

And that sort of thing happens a lot throughout the game. Massive mood whiplash at every turn. One moment you’re all having fun, taking things easy, having a laugh or two. The moment something nasty, violent and gory is happening, your party is getting hurt, your MC is half-dead… and then suddenly everything is fun and happy again. And back, and forth, and as the route progresses the happier moments get fewer and shorter and the bad moments get longer and longer and nastier and nastier. At least the ending was good, but the whole route just left me a feeling disturbed and more than a little bit down. This isn’t really a game for anyone who likes cheery fairy tales.

The downside of the Akazukin route is that it didn’t wrap up the story of Henrietta’s missing brothers or the mysterious golden keys, so I played the game a second time to see if I could sort that out. I was hoping to get either the Frog Prince or Bropunzel’s ending, but it was not to be. Turns out a large part of what route you go on is decided very, very early on with a series of seemingly random choices you make at the start of the game. Before I knew it I was on Ibara-hime’s route with no chance to turn around. Her route didn’t have as many depressing ups and downs as Akazukin’s did, but Ibara-hime herself is pushy, selfish, violent and annoying, and her ending has her snatching Henrietta away from her barely-rebuilt home and pressing her into a lifetime of vain stupidity at her castle, so I hated every minute of it.

The only good thing is that I did at least find out what happened to Henrietta’s older brothers. Jacob got possessed by the Demon King and Wilhelm went along to try and save him. The 7 golden keys are the only way to unseal the goddess Brunhilde, who is locked away within Henrietta, or something bizarre like that. After plenty of waffling and whining, Henrietta managed to seal the Demon King away along with the Grimm brothers. Good riddance. There are probably endings where you get to save either or both brothers, and endings where you find out what the deal is with Muma/Alp, the guy who put Henrietta and Ludwig to sleep for 5 years, but getting two endings is enough for me.

Summary of Zettai Meikyuu Grimm‘s good and bad points:

+ Cute, quirky character designs
+ Some likeable characters (Akazukin, Bropunzel, Frog Prince, Ludwig is okay)
+ Fairly short, dialogue-driven routes
+ Can check characters’ affection for you any time
+ Nice to see how they twisted some of the fairy tales
+ Accordion music started out annoying but grew on me after a bit

– No quick-save/quick-load function
– Some routes are hard to get on without a FAQ
– Some unlikeable characters (everyone except those I named above)
– Sudden dark, disturbing turns keep you on pins and needles
– Sudden dark, disturbing turns also make it impossible to enjoy the cute, happy moments because you’re too busy being depressed over the bad things that happened last time
– Akazukin’s “happy” ending isn’t all that happy once you realize the Demon King is going to be after Henrietta in a bit
– Ibara-hime’s ending was made of excrement and failure
– Voice-acting wasn’t all that good. Akazukin and Ibara-hime were especially annoying
– Demon King routes have you saving the world *yawn*

That’s about it for Zettai Meikyuu Grimm, but I’m going to be trying a few more VNs in the coming months.

Tales of Innocence – Quit after 7 hours

7 hours and 20 minutes, to be precise. I don’t think the Tales series is quite right for me. Tales of the Tempest was bad, everyone admits that. But Innocence was supposed to be one of the good ones. So good, in fact, that Namco released a remake for the Vita, meaning they were confident in its ability to sell. And yet I just couldn’t get into it.

I will admit that Innocence is better than Tempest on almost all scores (I think I liked the Tempest opening song better though). One thing I really like is all the little skits you get to watch. It’s like the Party Talk feature in DQ games, but lengthier and more detailed. IIRC they took skits out of Tempest except for during camp scenes, and as a result I never saw a single one. It’s a real shame because you get a lot of character interaction and development and story explanation and just plain fun and games in those skits, which really helps flesh out the game world.

Aaaand… that’s about it for what I liked. Battles were just ordinary ARPG battles. Felt like I was playing a weaker, duller, less flashy version of Star Ocean. And there was too much stuff to fiddle with in the menus: Styles, style abilities, specials, weapon customization (with no readily discernible effects), etc. They also threw in “Grade points” and Guild quests, all of which I studiously ignored because they were of the Dragon Quest IX-style “Put this on and go kill 10 bats” nonsensical type.

While Tales of Innocence doesn’t have random battles, enemies on the field pop up in all kind of places when you least expect them, making running around even the smallest area a major chore. Plus moving from place to place still takes forever on the needlessly large, empty and confusing world map populated with not-random-but-no-less-annoying-for-that battles. Those 7 hours and 20 minutes were incredibly tedious.

What really killed me though, is the story. I may have mentioned this before, but I hate reincarnation-based stories. They reek of laziness and unimaginativeness. It’s bad when the writers pull out the bullshit near the end as a ‘shocking twist’, but it’s just as bad when the whole story is about who was who in a past life, and it turns out they all knew each other back then blah blah blah. If that’s the case, all the mysteries of the game should be clear to the characters from the start, right? But nooo, when it comes to important plot points, everyone suddenly goes, “Oops, I forgot I had amnesia!!” They remember everything except what the player most needs to know! How convenient is that? Or rather, just how stupid do the writers think I am?

You either remember everything or you remember nothing, don’t waste my time with all this “I remember all this inconsequential bullshit that nobody gives a **** about, but I’ve forgotten the super-important plot twist that should have been the first thing any sensible person recalled” crap. BUUULLLLSHIIIITTTT.

Tales of Innocence is so bullshitty, in fact, that I’m not even going to bother wiki-ing or googling what the rest of the game would have been about if I had continued. RRRRGGHHH, it’s so annoying! Every time you meet a new character or party member and you’re looking forward to getting to know them, your party members jump ahead of you and go “Hey, I know you! Long time no see! Let’s go over there and talk about the past while leaving the player out in the cold, won’t that be fun?”

Am I making any sense? I’m not sure I’m making sense. I’m just pissed off right now. Everybody shows up and joins this little in-game clique, but they won’t let me in! >:-/ It’s like I’m watching Season 10 of a plot-driven show and they’re throwing a few recaps in as a sop to the poor idiots who weren’t there from the beginning. No, no, Namco. Don’t put yourselves out on my account. Enjoy your family reunion, I’m sure you have lots to catch up on. I’ll show myself out. Goodbye, and good riddance.

7th Dragon – I can’t believe I finished the whole thing!

And killed every single last dragon as well! And got NOTHING for all my trouble! My mind is just all kinds of boggled right now.

More than that, I’m just tired after killing 666 dragons and doing tons of sidequests over the course of about 70 hours. I had a good time, but now I just want to forget I ever played this game. I’m so tired. I’m going to lay all my frustrations on the line and then move on without a second thought.

What I liked about 7th Dragon

1. Relative freedom to go anywhere and do whatever you want
2. Resettable skill trees
3. Small number of job classes, but each class has several builds and no class is entirely useless.
4. Sidequests suck, but they’re optional so that’s good.
5. Subevents are optional too, but highly rewarding.
6. Hold A to fast-forward battles (not that fast, really. In fact they should have just made battles faster to begin with).
7. Decent music. I neither liked nor disliked the soundtrack.
8. Low-level party members are quick to level up. I could have switched out my entire party at the end if I’d wanted to.
9. Dungeons have shortcuts. It just sucks that you have to memorize the location of every single one. They should have auto-marked it on the dungeon map.
10. I actually didn’t find the character designs all that cute, but I appreciate the attempt.

What I wasn’t so crazy about

1. No reward for killing all 666 dragons except a stupid post-game dungeon ;___; I should have checked before starting. I could have finished this game in 50 hours or less!
2. Boring, perfunctory ending sequence. My guild goes out adventuring somewhere, the end. No kingdom for my troubles, no cash, no mansions, no nothing! Just a thank you and a good bye. This sucks.
3. Doing optional dungeons will make you overlevelled. If I’d known there was no point in killing everything I would have left them alone.
4. Being overlevelled will ruin half the fun of the game by making all battles including the final one a joke.
5. All the time I spent wiping out dragons made the game too long.
6. Not just long but also tedious, since I ended up using the same few moves over and over and over again. Like most dungeon crawlers, 7th Dragon is a test of patience and endurance rather than skill or strategy.
7. Stupidly high encounter rate and how much trouble you have to go through to avoid random battles.  I’ve already complained about this twice, but a thousand times wouldn’t be enough.
8. Weapon and item shops stopped updating about 40 hours in. I had over 450,000g and nothing to spend it on by the end of the game. Not that I needed anything, but it’s the principle of the thing.
9. Inconvenient transportation. Walking/running is too slow. Portals should have been in every single town, not at a few random places on the world map. The ship is fast, but dat encounter rate. Airship is slow, even with an upgrade. Every method is flawed.
10. No monster/item glossary. In a game where every other quest is “Bring 10 of X” and where you need item drops to unlock certain items and armor, it’s a real pain not knowing who drops what and where to find them.
11. Characters and NPCs look rather small on the screen.
12. Mining and foraging are almost completely useless.
13. No way to check what quests you are currently on once you leave town.
14. A little too much backtracking for my comfort. How many hundred times did I visit Kazan again?
15. No Auto-battle. This is one game that really needed it.
16. Furowaro! That is all.

The good parts were good enough to keep me playing, but since I got nothing worthwhile after all I put in, all I can see are the flaws now. I’m not sure I’d recommend it to any but the most patient and most hardcore of dungeon-crawler lovers. In spite of all the pain, however, I’d still like to try 7th Dragon 2020 on the PSP sometime. Not any time soon, though.

What’s next

Tales of Innocence. And I want to settle things with Suikoden II once and for all this month. But first, sleep and lots of it.

7th Dragon – 390 down, 276 more to go!

42 hours and 49 minutes. That’s roughly 9.2 dragons per hour, for anyone keeping score. I spent the past weekend in a state of mild addiction, but I’m all better now. *twitch* Yeah.

I ended up like this because shortly after I made my last post, 7th Dragon gave me a ship and set me loose on the world to do whatever I wanted in whatever order I wanted to. Walk around, sail around, fight whichever dragon I want, take whichever sidequest I want, rest when I want, it feels sooo good. Of course the game does provide some guidance about what I should be doing, but they’re just that: guidelines. It’s up to me to choose when to follow them and when to go my own way.

There was a bit of story progression when I reached 333 dragons, which got me a bit worried that they’d try to force me back on the rails. Luckily my fears are unfounded, and I still having a blast roaming the world in search of dragons to murder. It really helps that they’re so ugly and unsympathetic.

Now, about the factors I mentions in the previous post that might prevent me from finishing the game, well… Some of them have improved and some haven’t but I’ve learned to live with them.

1. Damage floors – Yeah, they still suck. But they did introduce an item that reduces the damage you take. The catch is that you have to keep opening the menu to check if it’s still effective, ‘cos they don’t tell you when it wears off. Plus it doesn’t last that long. Thankfully I have lots of money so I can afford lots of them as well as all the healing items and mana-refilling potions I care to buy.

2. The encounter rate – It gotten a lot better, now that my Samurai has an ability that prevents lower-level enemies from approaching me 90% of the time. The stores also stock items that supposedly reduce encounters, but they do diddly and squat. As with the damage floor item, I need to check my menu every couple of steps to make sure the ability is still in effect (really hope they fixed that in the sequel). Still I’ll take that any day over random battles with level 1 weaklings.

3. Low-level enemies attacking – Yeah, they still show up if I let my guard down. And my Samurai’s ability has no effect on those worthless loser mobs that are higher-level statistically speaking but still drop jack all in terms of EXP. I really, really hate them.

4. Poor EXP and item drops – Gotten used to it. It probably has something to do with me being over-leveled almost from the get-go. Now I kill dragons for the fun of it, not because I expect anything in return. I’m like a charity or something.

5. Useless skills – They fixed this with an item that allows you to reset your skill points in exchange for losing 5 levels. A worthy trade-off, obviously. If you redistribute those skill points effectively you’ll end up just as strong as before, if not stronger.

6. Boring sidequests – I don’t do them, for the most part. I might be missing out on some really great rewards as a result (I highly doubt it) but it’s not worth the aggravation.

And there you have my progress report. I’m still not 100% sure I’ll be able to finish 7th Dragon, but now I’ll admit it: I’m having a great time. Not in the heart-pounding excitement kind of way, but more in the “Okay I’ll go here, and then I’ll take care of this, and I should probably stop by there, and I mustn’t forget to do that, and…hmm, this room is getting kinda bright GAAAAH THE SUN IS RISING I’M SUPPOSED TO BE UP AT 7!!!!” kind of way. I should finish this quickly so I can get some sleep.

7th Dragon – Twelfth hour

It’s highly playable and fairly enjoyable, but not that different from all the other dungeon crawlers I’ve played recently. In fact, Final Promise Story and Fuurai no Shiren 2 are the only dungeon crawlers I can definitively say are worse than this. Everything else – Unchainblades Rexx, Criminal Girls, WiZman’s World, etc – leaves 7th Dragon crawling in the dust on the other side of the world.

Will I be able to finish this game? I’m not very sure. The story simply goes that dragons have taken over the world and a band of adventurers (created and led by me) is out to kill them all and save everyone. What’s interesting is that there’s a counter on the bottom screen that shows exactly how many dragons there are left. It started out at 666, and after twelve hours of killing and adventuring it’s… let’s see… 584. That’s 82 dragons in 12 hours, or approximately 6.8 dragons per hour. Assuming things proceed at the same rate, I’ll need to spend another 85 hours on this game before I finish it, and do I really want to do that? First word: Hell. Second word: No.

Unless something radically changes about the gameplay in the next couple of hours, here are the factors that will most likely prevent me from finishing 7th Dragon:

1. Damage floors, in the form of deadly flowers known as “furowaro” or something silly like that. Stepping on them will sap your party’s HP before you ever take on a single enemy. Warp out to heal and save and when you come back you have to go through all that pain again. This is the real reason it takes so long to take down those dragons, because they themselves aren’t that tough.

2. The encounter rate is way too frickin’ high. Especially on the world map. I’ve tried different items, I’ve tried different abilities and it’s still way too high for me.

3. Coupled with the above, I hate the way low-level enemies keep attacking even when they should know better.

4. The game is stingy with EXP and item drops, even for dungeon bosses. On one hand all the bosses so far have been so pathetically weak that I’m not surprised, but on the other hand, come on! What kind of boss battle doesn’t yield even a single level up? After all I went through getting through the bloody dungeon? It’s disgusting, that’s what it is.

5. Too many useless skills you have to waste skill points on in order to learn the few useful ones on the whole grid. I liked the way Final Promise Story did it, where they let you reset all your skill point assignments in exchange for a monetary penalty. Heavens knows I have more than enough money and nothing to spend it on.

6. Boring sidequests, mainly of the Twenty Bear Asses variety. I almost never do sidequests in this sort of game, but that doesn’t stop me from holding that fact against 7th Dragon anyway.

#1 and #2 are the ones I have a real problem with. If I can find an item/skill that reduces “furowaro” damage and/or stops it from growing back inside dungeons, and if I can find a way to stop non-dragon enemy encounters altogether, this game will take a massive, immediate turn for the better. It’s not an unreasonable expectation.

Everything else in the game I can deal with. I’m playing with an all-girl party now, as a tribute to Criminal Girls. I’m happy with my Samurai, Rogue, Mage and Healer, I can take down pretty much any enemy without too much trouble, I’ve got lots of money and items and I’ve found several shortcuts for getting through completed dungeons. If they’ll just fix those niggling little flaws, there might be hope for 7th Dragon after all.